1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the general field of medical devices and/or methods for cooling injured body parts to, e.g., alleviate pain and inflammation. In particular, it relates to an improved cover for ice bags and a method of providing an ice bag device using said cover that can be applied to an injured body part with improved comfort, convenience, and availability. Thus, it relates to a cover for ice bags that can be attached to a garment, said ice bag cover being compact, e.g., to fit in first-aid boxes to be used at home or away from home, e.g., in sporting events, such as at a soccer field or basketball court, outings in a park, picnics, and/or on trips. It also relates to an article of manufacture that provides such cover, to the method of fabricating and/or using such ice bag device using such cover; to the provision with the cover of instructions for use that aid unskilled users to provide effective emergency assistance (“first aid treatment”) to injured body parts, and to methods of doing business that promote the availability of such covers, articles of manufacture, and methods, etc., to the maximum number of people who may need such first aid treatment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The desirability of using ice bags for thermal therapy is well accepted. Ice bags enable the user to apply cold to an injury such as a bruise or sprain without unacceptable mess. A common ice bag that is commercially available is the reusable type comprising a water-impermeable, commonly a rubber-lined, flexible bag having a tubular rigid neck and a removable cap. To use, the bag is filled with ice cubes or ice chips and closed with the cap, then the bag is applied to the bruised body part and held in place by hand.
Another type of cold pack that is commercially available is a refrigeratable gel cold pack which comprises a refrigerant or coolant gel material contained in a plastic housing which can be either flexible or relatively inflexible. The gel packs are stored in a freezer for chilling or cooling and are then ready for use. Also commercially available is a chemical pack which comprises two or more pouches for separately storing chemical reactants which can be mixed to produce an endothermic cooling mixture.
A common home-use ice bag can be made using a commercially available reclosable plastic sandwich or freezer bag with a zipper seal, such as a Ziploc™ plastic bag filled with ice (Ziploc is a registered trademark of Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Mich.). By “reclosable” it is meant that the bag can be open and closed numerous times.
One of the disadvantages of these ice bags is that they need to be inconveniently held by hand to maintain contact with the injured body part. To overcome this inconvenience, several types of ice bag devices comprising a holder for these ice bags have been created. These ice bag devices can be strapped around a body part, with, e.g., loop and hook mating Velcro™-type fastening straps. Since ice bag devices need to be wrapped and tied around a body part, they are constrictive and can interfere with the blood flow. Furthermore, these ice bag devices are usually of complicated design, large and bulky in size and/or expensive to produce and/or difficult to be washed for reuse.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,887,437 issued Mar. 30, 1999 to Maxim discloses a chemical cold pack that does not have fastening straps, but instead has an extended perimeter with adhesive means to attach the chemical cold pack to a skin surface. However when this self-adhesive chemical cold pack is applied to an unwashed and likely profusely sweaty skin surface of a bruised body part of an athlete who is injured in the field, the sweaty and/or soiled skin surface can make a common adhesive means less adhering. The adhering means can be made to be more strongly sticky, but in this case the removal of the device from the skin surface after use can be more uncomfortable, especially when the skin area is already bruised. This particular cold pack is not intended for reuse.
To overcome the constriction effect of the strapping, there are efforts to develop garments or other devices that can provide the cold therapy without the need to be tightly strapped and/or wrapped. U.S. Pat. No. 2,403,676 issued Jul. 9, 1946 to Modlinski discloses a jacket with a plurality of attached pockets to hold ice packs or ice bags. U.S. Pat. No. 4,891,501 issued Jan. 2, 1990 to Lipton discloses a therapeutic pad, with cooling elements, that can be hung around the neck or the head to treat the muscles of the neck, the chest, the back, and/or the jaw. U.S. Pat. No. 5,167,655 issued Dec. 1, 1992 to McCoy discloses a cold therapy panty provided with a receptacle located adjacent to the crotch area to receive a cold pack for applying cold therapy to the crotch of the wearer. U.S. Pat. No. 4,033,354 issued Jul. 5, 1977 to De Rosa discloses an ice cooling vest-like garment comprising water-filled pockets that are frozen and subsequently attached via Velcro fasteners to the inside of the garment so as to provide body cooling under heat stress conditions. Although these cold pack devices provide an improvement over the prior art, they are of complicated design, large and bulky in size and/or expensive to produce and/or difficult to be washed for reuse.
Thus, there is a need for an improved, inexpensive and readily available ice bag device that can be attachable in some manner without being held by hand, and preferably without being strapped and/or tied around a body part, because such strapping can be constrictive and can interfere with the blood flow. Preferably such ice bag device is compact, not bulky, so that preferably it can fit in a first-aid box along with other first-aid items. Preferably such ice bag device is easily manufactured and used.